Following previous reports that PlayStation had plans to drop its PC releases, the studio has now doubled down on its decision, as it has announced that all of its first-party narrative-driven single-player games will now be console exclusives.
As reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier via social media, PlayStation Studio business CEO Hermen Hulst dropped the news to staff during the company’s town hall on 18 May, affirming its change in strategy. This means that current PS5 releases like Ghost of Yōtei and Saros, alongside upcoming ones like Marvel’s Wolverine or Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, will no longer be heading to the PC.
Still, the announcement was specific to single-player titles, so it remains to be seen whether multiplayer-centric games would see the same exclusivity. According to Schreier’s previous report, multiplayer titles such as the recently released Marathon or the upcoming Fairgame$ will still be headed to the PC, alongside single-player games made by external developers but published by PlayStation, such as Death Stranding 2 and Kena: Scars of Kosmora.
PlayStation’s strategy seems to stem from the varying performance of its games on PC, with its current single-player releases like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 underperforming on the platform despite being one of the PS5’s biggest games, with its all-time concurrent player peak at only 28,189 at the time of writing. Multiplayer titles, on the other hand, such as Helldivers 2, have performed significantly better, with an all-time peak of 458,709 concurrent players.
This change comes almost six years following PlayStation’s decision to bring some of its biggest games, like its rebooted God of War franchise or The Last of Us, to the PC, a move seemingly made to expand its playbase as much as possible. While no one knows the concrete reason why it has decided to backtrack now, this might possibly be due to the announcement of the new Xbox console, Project Helix, which is set to play both Xbox and PC games, and having its competitor’s console be able to play its games might not have sat well with Sony.
While Sony hunkers down on console exclusivity, Xbox is seemingly taking the opposite route by confirming that its first-party titles like Forza Horizon 6 and Fable will be making their way to the PS5. It’s a strange time we live in for sure, and only time will tell which side will come out on top.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Yong Le
